The recent presentation of the Parque La Reina Secondary School, which will replace the Guaza barracks next year, according to the forecasts of the Ministry of Education, 21 years after it opened its doors, has highlighted the worrying reality that affects in the south of Tenerife for years: the lack of schools and institutes to cope with so much demand for school places.
The construction, more than three years late, of the next aronero institute -the largest in all of the Canary Islands and with a capacity to accommodate 800 students in its classrooms- will mean a small relief to lower the ratios in the municipality, but not solve a serious situation.
Union representatives speak of a “bleeding” situation in the south of the Island and attribute it, among other factors, to a “lack of planning at the source”, after the tourist and population development of the region have gone far ahead of basic services demanded by residents. They remember that tourism attracts relatively young workers, in many cases foreigners, who decide to start a family in the South.
The result is overcrowded classrooms, greater behavior problems, more conflict between teachers and students and, therefore, worse quality of education, warn the unions, which demand the construction of more centers, since the current ones are at their “maximum capacity ”.
The councils of the municipalities with the largest population in the region are not oblivious to this reality and ask for more agility in the projects to build educational infrastructures in their municipalities. Arona has already transferred to the Government of the Canary Islands the need to build, in addition to the IES Parque La Reina, an institute in the midlands and expand the existing centers in Valle San Lorenzo, Los Cristianos, El Fraile, Cho and the town of Aronero.
In Granadilla de Abona, the second municipality in the number of inhabitants in the South, the educational buildings have also become too small and the City Council warns about the “massification” of the classrooms, for which reason it calls for a new school in Charco del Pino, a Vocational Training Center in San Isidro, the extension to the fourth year of ESO at the Los Abrigos school and the improvement of the Granadilla Infant and Primary School and the four institutes that are spread throughout the municipality.
THE QUEEN PARK
In the new educational center of Arona, which received last week the visit of the President of the Government of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, and the mayor of Arona, José Julián Mena, 740 students will study from September, according to the forecasts of the Ministry of Education. While waiting for the Government of the Canary Islands to receive the official communication of the completion of the works by the winning company to process the reception of the center, the new institute will offer students large common spaces and fully equipped facilities in almost 10,000 square meters. built.
